Tuesday, July 08, 2014

About Turning Mysore into Paris - An Open Letter to Mr. Pratap Simha, MP Mysore constituency.

Dear Mr. Pratap Simha

The front page of yesterday eveninger, City Today said that you
are all set to turn Mysore into Paris.

Now while it is my dearest wish to sip champagne atop the
Eifel Tower while wearing a Chanel original - and what could be better than if
I could do that in Namma Mysooru - I reigned in my untrammeled ecstasy to take
a few minutes to read beyond the headline and try to understand what exactly
you had in mind.

Secondly, on carefully perusing your “development agenda” as
stated by the newspaper, I noticed that apart from a “think tank” on ideas to
develop Mysore, the rest of it is all to do with improving connectivity between
Mysore to Bangalore. And of course
having tour guides printed in all Indian and foreign languages, which I hope
will include Serbo-Croatian and Swahili because there is no saying from where
tourists will flock to = Paris of India.

But, in your pre-election and post election tours of namma soon-to-be-Paris-of-India,
you may have noticed that we have a few pressing problems. And I am only bringing
them to your noticenot because we locals are inconvenienced – how could I be so
selfish

But because the tourists are likely to notice.

Like this one.

Thing is, of late, we Mysoreans have begun to produce a lot of garbage. Side effects of development,
I’m told

About 400 tonnes of it a day, give or take a few tonnes. And
it seems that we – (by ‘we’, I mean we the public as well as the Mysore City
Corporation) haven’t yet figured out what to do with all this garbage. To understand
what I mean, just walk around the city and you will see piles of garbage lying around much like the
one in the picture. Now, I haven’t been to Paris but I’m guessing that mounds
of putrid, stinking garbage do not figure as one of its attractions. And yes, I
know you plan to light up Chamundi Hill
and the Mysore Palace every evening but I don’t think that will really distract
the tourists from the garbage, if you get my drift.

Or this one.

Now, apart from garbage, we Mysoreans have decided that we
need a lot of vehicles. On the roads and off them. (In fact, in many residential areas, there is
more parked vehicle than road.) So, vehicular traffic is currently estimated at about 5 lakh vehicles which makes
it about 1 vehicle for every 2 Mysoreans. And every third shop, after a chemist
and a bakery is a two-wheeler showroom.

So what‘s the problem?

Er, a small one really. In order to drives all those
vehicles, we need roads. And our roads
are….well, let’s just say that we are moving to a situations where there may be
more potholes than vehicles. Or Mysoreans. And it isn't as if our ever diligent
civic authorities don’t repair the roads. But for some strange,
till-now-not-understood-by-science-and-technology, the potholes pop up again.
And again. And again. Bigger and deeper
and more pot-holer than the last ones.
And the reason why this might come in the way of our hurtling towards
becoming the Paris-of-India is that tourists travel on roads too.

From their hotels to
Chamundi Hill to see all those pretty lights.

And then to Mysore Palace to see more pretty lights. And so
on and so forth.

Let me say for the record that it isn’t as if the
aforementioned diligent civic authorities are trying. As an example, they
planned to convert 5-kilometer stretch
of road along which the annual Dussera procession travels into a “Raja Marga”.
I’m not sure what exactly that means, but
from the name, it sounds like something really grand. And a
tourist-magnet.

The foundation stone for this Raja Marga was laid in August
2010. We are now in 2014 and it is unlikely that the Raja Marga will be
completed for this Dussera…er, I mean tourist season.

Then there are overflowing drains, resulting in a delicious
monsoon special cocktail of sewage water being mixed drinking water. Talking of
drinking water, when it doesn't rain, many parts of the city have no water,
drinking or of any other kind.

Did I mention unplanned, uncontrolled urban sprawl? .

Or shrinking lung space?

Or deforestation of Chamundi Hill that you plan to so
prettily light up.

It’s a long list. Some of which the tourists won’t notice.
(And after all, not every part of Paris is touristy, is it.) But some of it
they will. And this may come in the way of namma Mysooru becoming namma
Paris-in-India.